August 20, 2024

Drs. Sue Maixner and Donovan Maust installed as the inaugural Willard C. Blackney Jr. and Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney Clinician-Educator and Research Professors in Geriatric Psychiatry

The professorship installation celebration was held on July 10, 2024.

Dr. Donovan Maust and Dr. Sue Maixner with Psychiatry chair Dr. Gregory Dalack 

 

In July, we celebrated the inaugurations of Susan M. Maixner, M.D., as the first Willard C. Blackney Jr. and Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney Clinician-Educator Professor of Geriatric Psychiatry and Donovan T. Maust, M.D., as the first Willard C. Blackney Jr. and Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney Research Professor of Geriatric Psychiatry.

A recording of the event can be viewed here.

The two new professorships honor the legacy of Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney, a grateful patient of the geriatric psychiatry clinic, and her late husband, Williard C. Blackney, Jr. 

Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney

Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney

Much of Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney’s early life was spent in Michigan’s upper peninsula. She was born in 1936 in Hancock and later lived on the Sturgeon River on the Keweenaw Peninsula. She graduated from Ann Arbor High School and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan. As a U-M student during the 1950s, she was a member of the team that analyzed data from the development of the Salk polio vaccine. Upon graduating in 1954, she met her husband Willard C. (Bud) Blackney, Jr., a 1954 graduate of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. They settled in Saginaw, Michigan, where Geraldine taught at Arthur Hill High School.

Geraldine is remembered as an avid reader, traveler, and classic movie fan. An accomplished weaver and potter, she was a lifelong collector and devotee of the arts. She was also passionate about the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor community. She spent many of her later years enjoying the culture, music, environment, and social fabric of U-M. She passed away on July 4, 2022, preceded in death in 2001 by her husband, Bud.

 

Susan M. Maixner, M.D.
Willard C. Blackney Jr. and Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney Clinician-Educator Professor of Geriatric Psychiatry

Susan Maixner, M.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry (promotion to professor effective September 2024) is triple boarded in geriatric psychiatry, general psychiatry, and hospice and palliative medicine. A champion of humanism in medicine and respect for aging adults, she is nationally known as an expert geriatric psychiatry educator, receiving the 2006 American Psychiatric Society’s Nancy C.A. Roeske Medical Student Teaching Award.

Her expertise in geriatric mental health, neurodegenerative behavior changes, and improving dementia care benefits her patients at Michigan Medicine’s Geriatrics Center and the Huron Valley Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. She is the site principal investigator of a Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center’s NIH grant on Dementia with Lewy Bodies and directs Michigan Medicine’s Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship and Program.

Dr. Maixner, a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, served on the first ACGME Milestones fellowship outcomes working group, and is secretary-treasurer-elect of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.

Dr. Maixner received her medical degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and completed her general psychiatry residency and geriatric psychiatry fellowship at the University of Michigan.

 

Donovan T. Maust, M.D., MS
Willard C. Blackney Jr. and Geraldine LaTendresse Blackney Research Professor of Geriatric Psychiatry

Donovan T. Maust, M.D., M.S., is a geriatric psychiatrist at U-M and the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Health System. His research examining psychotropic prescribing to older adults began during residency at the University of Pennsylvania and has led to projects funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institute on Drug Abuse, and Department of Veterans Affairs.

His work has expanded to focus on the health care workforce, particularly those caring for persons with dementia. With colleagues at the University of California San Francisco, the U-M Survey Research Center, and elsewhere, Dr. Maust is co-leading launch of the National Dementia Workforce Study, a family of surveys of the professional dementia workforce funded through an $81 million cooperative agreement with the NIA. Since joining U-M’s faculty in 2013, Dr. Maust has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator of over $97 million in federal funding and has authored over 115 publications.

Dr. Maust earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University and completed clinical training at the University of Pennsylvania.